128GB Surface Pro sells out: High demand, short supply, or both?

Almost as soon as it went on sale on Saturday morning, the $999 128GB versions of Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet sold out. Whether buying online from Microsoft or from the Microsoft, Best Buy, Staples, or Future Stops bricks-and-mortar stores, the devices are unavailable, with no estimated availability. You can't even put your name down for a pre-order.

Sign of a successful launch? That's harder to say. Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet reports that some stores received just a single device to sell. With stock that thin on the ground, even idle curiosity would likely cause the Surface Pro to sell out. Other stores certainly had more stock: one Ars reader reports the Westfield San Francisco Centre Microsoft Store had dozens of 128GB units, with one person buying 23 of the machines in a single transaction. So Microsoft has certainly sold a bunch of the 128GB Surface Pros—but whether that represents thousands, tens of thousands, or even more, we don't know.

We do know that 64GB Surface Pros, however, still seem to be relatively abundant, with stores still having stock and Microsoft's online store still taking orders.

We also don't know is whether this means that supplies of the 128GB unit are healthier, or that demand for the cheaper unit is lower. One would suspect early demand is tilted in favor of the more expensive device. 64GB just isn't that much space on a new machine bought in 2013, especially for technically minded early adopters. Add to this the concern about the amount of disk space actually available on the 64GB Surface Pro and it's plausible it's simply not that popular.

We also don't know why the 128GB units are so hard to come by. It's possible Microsoft has been taken by surprise and is facing higher than expected demand; it's also possible that its supply chain, which is still pretty new, simply couldn't produce enough units to cope with even modest demand.

One thing, however, is clear: would-be buyers aren't happy about it. The comments on Microsoft's official Surface blog about the lack of availability are increasingly hostile. Commenters note the same low stock levels, with some claiming their local stores received not a single device. In the commenters' views, Microsoft's handling of the launch is nothing short of incompetent.

Even if the company has been caught off-guard by demand substantially higher than anticipated, there should at least be the ability to register interest and get in line. People could then know when new hardware does roll off the production line and buy systems on a first come, first served basis.

With Microsoft not taking pre-orders or giving any indication of when the systems will be back in stock, prospective buyers are already looking elsewhere. While nothing else on the market offers quite the same design approach or features of the Surface Pro, if you're willing to accept slightly different form factors, there are viable alternatives from Samsung (the Ativ Smart PC Pro), Lenovo (the Yoga), or even Apple (MacBook Air). Microsoft can't afford to leave potential customers hanging for too long or there's a good chance they'll go for one of these competing systems.

While the Surface Pro launch is proving frustrating to those interested in the product, there are, for Microsoft and its resellers, worse outcomes. A glut of Surface Pros sitting unloved and unwanted on store shelves and warehouses would have been even worse than a shortage. Retailers may be frustrated at the lack of stock, but not as frustrated as they'd be with stock they'd have to give away at a knock-down price (as happened not so long ago with the HP TouchPad).

Microsoft could, and should, be doing more to keep potential buyers engaged, and the criticism on this point is well-deserved. But if the company opted to play it safe and go for a more conservative launch rather than flooding the market, that's an understandable—and arguably even sensible—decision.

Welcome to the hardware game, Microsoft? You'd think with their industry experience and money they'd have been able to put together a better launch. Forgiving them a flawed product when it's their first entry into this space is one thing. Forgiving them something as basic as a product launch is harder.

Welcome to the hardware game, Microsoft? You'd think with their industry experience and money they'd have been able to put together a better launch. Forgiving them a flawed product when it's their first entry into this space is one thing. Forgiving them something as basic as a product launch is harder.

I think they're fully aware of how to handle high-demand hardware releases. They're working on the 3rd XBox after all.

After reading the comments on the official blog, it is starting to sound a lot to me like Microsoft did not have the 128 GB surface pros ready by the deadline. Whatever the reason, their lack of communication is going to greatly hurt them.

Welcome to the hardware game, Microsoft? You'd think with their industry experience and money they'd have been able to put together a better launch. Forgiving them a flawed product when it's their first entry into this space is one thing. Forgiving them something as basic as a product launch is harder.

I think they're fully aware of how to handle high-demand hardware releases. They're working on the 3rd XBox after all.

Yeah, that's a good point. So, really, forgiveness of this is pretty much impossible to come by.

A tablet running proper Windows seemed like it'd be a tablet I could be interested in. Like many, I had high hopes for the promise of the Windows 8 every ecosystem (computer, phone, tablet) but if it ever comes to fruition it's clearly going to be a while before it does.

Don't make many, claim Windows 8 is the best OS ever and then declare it a success!

That might work for Best Buy and Staples, but for Microsoft to run out at their own online store seems to indicate that they were surprised by the demand. I can understand a 3rd party retailer wanting to hedge their bets with a light order, but microsoftstore.com? What sense does that make?

After reading the comments on the official blog, it is starting to sound a lot to me like Microsoft did not have the 128 GB surface pros ready by the deadline. Whatever the reason, their lack of communication is going to greatly hurt them.

That'd be my best guess, too. Their awful error in mischaracterizing the free space suggests they weren't ready for the perception that the device, meant for close tethering to SkyDrive, needed gobs of free storage.

Which in turn calls into question who they have in mind for these things. Looks increasingly like they are thin clients that can tiptoe away from the mothership every now & then.

"there are viable alternatives from Samsung (the Ativ Smart PC Pro), Lenovo (the Yoga), or even Apple (MacBook Air). Microsoft can't afford to leave potential customers hanging for too long or there's a good chance they'll go for one of these competing systems."

Actually, from MS's standpoint only the third is a major problem. They've made statements the Surface/RT was intended as a showpiece of what could be done, not as part of an effort to displace the OEMs. From that standpoint the transfer of sales from their product to similar Samsung, Lenovo, etc win8 devices isn't a major problem.

I don't know how many distribution points Microsoft set up, but I'm gonna guess a few dozen phone calls would allow their marketing types to know ±5% — maybe, exactly — how many units they'll have sold within the first week.

But I don't think it's an “industry standard” to do so. Certainly, an up-and-coming company wants to let the world know it has the wind to its back, but there's only one that I can think of that prefers to let its business partners know the true magnitude of their opportunities for apps, etc.

Even in the case of the supposedly popular Kindle, it seems they'd much rather tease people than to come out with a number that people could look at, then move on. Keep 'em guessing, I'd say, is the real standard that Microsoft will uphold, until the story looks fabulous.

Don't make many, claim Windows 8 is the best OS ever and then declare it a success!

That might work for Best Buy and Staples, but for Microsoft to run out at their own online store seems to indicate that they were surprised by the demand. I can understand a 3rd party retailer wanting to hedge their bets with a light order, but microsoftstore.com? What sense does that make?

If it was like palm.com, it's probably a 3rd party retailer that was worse than other resellers of palm PDAs.

Went to the MS Store this weekend and the first three Surface Pros we tried were non-functional. They ran as tablets, but wouldn't recognize keyboards even with the MS Store guy repeatedly trying different tricks to get it to work. Fourth one worked, but made me wonder about the yield on these.

For what it's worth, with kb/stylus it was quite a nice bit of kit - great screen, the keyboard worked well enough, and the stylus was great. If they could do something about the battery life (new lower-powered i5) I'd be tempted.

Sometimes demand really exceeds supply. It does here too, but if it isn't terrible manufacturing difficulties I suspect some clever brand manager has read "Persuasion" and decided to create some Scarcity to help the Surface Pro along in public perception.

Microsoft needs a refresher course in EOQ, Economic Order Quantity. They screwed up trying to make a PR splash. All they made was a splash, as in belly-flop.

Do you think the small supply was deliberate? I hear there's a touchscreen shortage right now(unless you're Apple).

If there's an actual shortage there's an actual shortage. Reports of screen yield issues have been rampant for a year, so Microsoft knew the likely situation months ago. Plenty of opportunity to calibrate the launch to availability.

Suppliers have to keep commitments already made — or risk being blacklisted by other prospective customers who find out . I'd think either Microsoft got those commitments or planned on a very restricted rollout. Rather than just guessing they could pick up their exact spec on the spot market.

Went to the MS Store this weekend and the first three Surface Pros we tried were non-functional. They ran as tablets, but wouldn't recognize keyboards even with the MS Store guy repeatedly trying different tricks to get it to work. Fourth one worked, but made me wonder about the yield on these.

For what it's worth, with kb/stylus it was quite a nice bit of kit - great screen, the keyboard worked well enough, and the stylus was great. If they could do something about the battery life (new lower-powered i5) I'd be tempted.

Suppliers have to keep commitments already made — or risk being blacklisted by prospective customers who find out — but presumably Microsoft either got those commitments or didn't try. Rather than just guessing they could pick up their exact spec on the spot market.

At this point Microsoft doesn't have any idea how many Pros they're gonna sell on a quarterly basis. They can't just preorder 10 million screens like Apple.

Sometimes demand really exceeds supply. It does here too, but if it isn't terrible manufacturing difficulties I suspect some clever brand manager has read "Persuasion" and decided to create some Scarcity to help the Surface Pro along in public perception.

Not to dispute your suspicion at all, but this is an audience that has seen this page of the Tech Playbook get pretty dog-eared over the last couple of Next Big Things.

Anyone who wants a 128 gb Surface Pro but can't find one...OEMs have been offering similar devices since October 2012. You can easily go out TODAY and find a Vaio Duo 11 or Dell XPS 12 or Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro with 128 gb of storage or more (indeed, I think all three offer a 256 gb storage option).

Re: DemandI'm not a personal fan of the hardware, or the OS, but good for them. Nice to know that the market they were targetting exists. I honestly suspected otherwise.

Re: Hard Drive SpaceAn old comment for an old point. 128 GB really doesn't sound that large to me, for any tablet. I'm surprised any tablet maker is not beefing up their disk space, especially considering how cheap memory is these days.

Re: CommentsA lot of these comments are disappointing. If similar ones were made in Apple-related hardware, they'd be downvoted hundreds of times.

Anyone who wants a 128 gb Surface Pro but can't find one...OEMs have been offering similar devices since October 2012. You can easily go out TODAY and find a Vaio Duo 11 or Dell XPS 12 or Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro with 128 gb of storage or more (indeed, I think all three offer a 256 gb storage option).

None of those devices have magnetic attachable keyboard with the quality of screen that the Surface Pro has.

Realistically 64GB is not enough for Windows 8. These should come in 128GB and 256GB versions. Hopefully Microsoft will realize this.

That would be a stupid decision and I'm glad you are not running MS. For some people, 64 GB is enough. If you don't carry around a library of videos, 64 GB goes a long way for quite a few application installs and user documents. Some people don't use this as a desktop replacement. They don't need to install gazillion programs and store their media library. Heck, I am doing fine with a 32 GB W8 tablet and I'm as big of a power user as anyone here.

Suppliers have to keep commitments already made — or risk being blacklisted by prospective customers who find out — but presumably Microsoft either got those commitments or didn't try. Rather than just guessing they could pick up their exact spec on the spot market.

At this point Microsoft doesn't have any idea how many Pros they're gonna sell on a quarterly basis. They can't just preorder 10 million screens like Apple.

If Microsoft inadvertently ordered TWICE as many due to over-optimism, it'd be a small expense. These news/rumor stories are making it sound like we're talking about perhaps thousands of units, maybe a couple tens of thousands available on Day 1. If Microsoft isn't going to be selling a couple hundreds of thousands at least over the next few weeks/months, they have a much more serious problem than 3000 square feet of warehouse space stacked high.

Anyone who wants a 128 gb Surface Pro but can't find one...OEMs have been offering similar devices since October 2012. You can easily go out TODAY and find a Vaio Duo 11 or Dell XPS 12 or Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro with 128 gb of storage or more (indeed, I think all three offer a 256 gb storage option).

None of those devices have magnetic attachable keyboard with the quality of screen that the Surface Pro has.

Anyone who wants a 128 gb Surface Pro but can't find one...OEMs have been offering similar devices since October 2012. You can easily go out TODAY and find a Vaio Duo 11 or Dell XPS 12 or Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro with 128 gb of storage or more (indeed, I think all three offer a 256 gb storage option).

None of those devices have magnetic attachable keyboard with the quality of screen that the Surface Pro has.

The 1080p IPS display on the Vaio Duo 11 is truly gorgeous. I'd like to see back-to-back tests before declaring the Surface Pro's 1080p IPS display is better, not to mention leaves it in the dust.

The Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro has a detachable keyboard if you don't like the convertible designs of the Duo 11 or XPS 12.

I suspect its both. I'm going to guess they couldn't produce as many as they wanted (yield issues), got cold feet with the level of commitment/investment required due to Surface RT, or didn't want to get caught with a ton of them with Haswell-based buzz. Any of these could've limited supply, then there's the normal short-changing retailers for buzz on top of that.

One friend of mine wonders if Microsoft is basically "practicing" with the Surface RT and Surface Pro, and we'll see the end of this year come out with Surfaces we wanted from the get-go. I'm actually inclined to believe that's a viable theory... certainly, my Windows Phone 7, as much as I love it, wasn't a long term product so much as a really nice interim product while they worked on Windows Phone 8.